As the sun rose in the new September sky, Mrs. Blenkinsop lay awake in the adjoining study where Godwin had insisted she rest for the first time in so many hours, or was it days? It all seemed to pour from one vessel and slip through her fingers. The settee was too small for her, but she adjusted, as she had all her life, to whatever circumstances allowed. She’d slept in fits and starts, but with the door cracked open, as agreed, that she could be alert to any stirring in the bedroom. Mr. Godwin now took his turn at watch, sitting on a chair pulled up close to his wife’s bed, with his “little bird” tucked into his arms. Mrs. B thought she heard him softly humming. It sounded like a hymn, one from childhood, maybe, that he didn’t know still lived inside him.

Mrs. B rearranged her aching body, put her arms behind her head, and tried to re-create the last day in her mind, something to keep her tethered to the waking world. If the sun was up, so must she have been, as was her daily habit. She could remember Poignand closing Mary’s loins with dry cloths, that was yesterday morning, when Mary shut her eyes and slept at last. Then she’d offered him a clean towel, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, to wipe his bloody hands. It was coming back to her now, clear and in the right order. The sight of his wife’s blood—mixed with ecstatic relief—had required Mr. Godwin to steady himself on the back of a chair.

“You’re sure, then?” he asked the doctor.

“She’s out of danger,” said Poignand. “Get some rest, or you’re no good to her at all.”

Mr. Godwin asked him to inspect the newborn before he left, but assured Mrs. B, taking her aside, that it was not a slight, and she took none.

“Do you mean for me to go, sir?” Mrs. B whispered.

Mr. Godwin rubbed his forehead in that way that was now familiar to her. “I don’t think so. Honestly, I think Mary will want you here when she wakes. Unless of course you’re needed elsewhere.”

Mrs. B was used to carriages and messages coming and going from the Westminster Lying-In, all the time, but none had come, and she was glad of it. She wanted to be here, only here. Some part of her never wanted to leave, though she didn’t know why. She was old enough to stop delivering women altogether. Her husband had wanted her to. She could go home now and rest for good. But even if Mary no longer needed her, the languid infant did.